All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.
Plotinus, First Ennead, II.3.7.
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Slavery Abolished
On August 28, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act received Royal Assent, formally abolishing slavery throughout most the British Empire.
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Done to the Dogs
It shouldn’t have happened.
Shire councils should not be killing dogs “to prevent volunteers at a Cobar-based animal shelter from travelling to pick up the animals.”
But that’s what happened. The Bourke Shire Council in the New South Wales region of Australia shot and killed several dogs, including a new mother, that were about to be picked up and taken to an animal shelter.
An Office of Local Government reported that the council did this “to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”
We all know that shelters sometimes put down animals when the shelter cannot find a home for them.
This wasn’t that. The council’s action wasn’t a reluctant last resort. It was a first resort.
It was, the argument runs, about preventing volunteers from going from here to there in the ordinary course of their work, work that has not been discontinued for the duration of the pandemic.
The council’s action is an example of what happens when fear displaces common sense. The thwarted shelter volunteers, who love animals and volunteer precisely to prevent needless killing, are distressed. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that they had safety measures in place to deal with the pandemic while getting the dogs.
This isn’t the worst kind of thing going on in this world, obviously.
But you don’t have to be an animal rights activist to be appalled by the viciousness of the conduct.
And it does serve as a marker for the callousness and crazed panic of politicians in the current crisis. What else might they do?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: “How did I get into this condition?”
Seneca the Younger, Letter XXXVII: “On Allegiance to Virtue.”
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Baltic Independence
On August 27, 1991, the European Community recognized the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Moldova after they had declared their independence from the USSR.
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Political Intimidation Unmasked
Last week, Illinois state regulators threatened Dr. Jeremy Henrichs with “personal and professional consequences,” specifically loss of his medical license, if he continued to oppose mandatory mask-wearing in schools.
Henrichs is a board of education member and a medical doctor.
He questioned the necessity of masks. Why? On the basis of his best medical judgment — and he is hardly alone in seeing good reasons to oppose mask mandates, especially for children. In response, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation “has threatened my medical licensure unless I expressly support and enforce a mask mandate for all students.”
In his public protest, Henrichs added that it’s bad for democracy when people tolerate this kind of intimidation.
Fortunately, in this particular case the intimidation is not being tolerated, for state lawmakers called for hearings on the matter.
The agency that threatened Dr. Henrichs soon apologized, apparently ending the threat to him. (According to the letter of apology, though, the complaint won’t be formally closed until the Medical Disciplinary Board meets on September 1.)
In addition, the entire Mahomet-Seymour school board of which Henrichs is a member has signed an op-ed defending him.
Their op-ed argues that board members should be “free to express their opinions, debate with their colleagues . . . and vote their conscience without the threat of coercion. . . .”
So it’s looking good for Dr. Henrichs. But power-holders with censorious mentalities are still out there, eager to crack down on speech with which they disagree.
Whenever they can get away with it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Marcus Aurelius
A man should be upright, not kept upright.
On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment to United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote in every state of the union.
Prior to the passage of this amendment, 15 states allowed women to vote. Most of them were west of the Mississippi. The territory of Wyoming was the first to extend voting rights to women in 1869.
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Slackers, Unite!
International socialists may once have rallied around “workers, unite!” but today’s young “communists” are embracing a Non-Workers movement, demanding free stuff and/or a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
This came to mind reading a recent New York Times’s op-ed, “Work Is a False Idol,” and an earlier report, “These Chinese Millennials Are ‘Chilling,’ and Beijing Isn’t Happy.” A new movement in China and elsewhere, known as “Lying Flat,” extols indolence.
Instead of a career? Working hard?
Do nothing!
Sounds like early retirement.
Very early retirement, for this is a young adult malaise.
Cassady Rosenblum, who took the trouble to author the op-ed, quoted a poem that asked “what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” and answered: “Sit on the porch.”
This “Lying flat” slacker movement reminds me of a novel I haven’t read, but whose theme has stuck with me, nonetheless: Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov. It is about a young nobleman who spends the book recumbent, or so I’m told.
“Oblomovism” was a cultural obsession before the Soviet Revolution and a problem afterward. If no one produces, how could anyone consume?
With the character Oblomov, his lethargy merely drained the capital of his family’s aristocratic past.
With the hero of the new “Lying Flat” movement, Luo Huazhong — author of the mortal classic, “Lying Flat Is Justice” — he lives off odd jobs and his savings. So far, at least, self-sufficient.
With Ms. Rosenblum, it’s her parents’ porch, and, thereby, their savings.
Think of what would happen were a UBI put in place. More horizontal living and less production (for redistribution).
Oblomovism triumphs and we all lose.
After all, “Lying flat” is the perfect term for the ultimate in do-nothingism: what you do in a coffin.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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